Diane Wieland

Social bullying in nursing academia

Social bullying has gained attention in the contemporary literature and increasing scrutiny in nursing academia. With a paucity of research on the topic in nursing, the authors asked nursing faculty about the phenomenon of being bullied by faculty colleagues or academic administrators. They discuss their study and its outcomes and implications for academic work lives, recruitment, and retention.

Resilience to social bullying in academia: a phenomenological study

While social bullying, negative workplace behaviors, and incivility are receiving scholarly attention, no research study could be identified targeting resilience to social bullying in nursing programs. This article describes a phenomenological study that investigated resilience to social bullying. Seventeen self-identified bullied nurse faculty were audiotaped. Colaizzi’s method guided data analysis. Multiple themes reflected 3 chronologic periods: during bullying, decisional phase, and after bullying. Implications for the health and well-being of nursing faculty are posed.

Communicating clinical agency orientation materials via the university portal.

The development and implementation of the undergraduate nursing program electronic group served as a solution to managing increased communication among administrators, faculty, students, and clinical liaisons. Two national trends occurred simultaneously that led to our use of electronic groups: dramatic increases in nursing student enrollment and concurrent implementation of computerization orientation for nursing staff of local healthcare systems. Because of these pressures, agencies requested that faculty and students engage in the completion of The Joint Commission and agency mandatory orientation activities before on-site hospital orientation. We had dramatic student enrollment increases between 2001 and 2007. This required an increase in the number of clinical faculty in the midst of a nurse educator shortage. Before 2003, students attended 1 day of orientation at the clinical agency. Next, more hospitals introduced computerized nursing documentation and medication systems, which then became the sole purpose for on-site student and faculty clinical orientation. This led to clinical agencies shifting some responsibility for certain agency orientation material to the undergraduate nursing program faculty to maintain a 1-day orientation. Initially, clinical agency staff sent to the faculty the orientation documents and computer discs for distribution. Our initial response was to place the information on selected computers on 2 campuses; however, within the year, multiple agencies also had similar requirements. Before the electronic group, mass e-mail groups were created and maintained by the undergraduate nursing scheduling coordinator (UNSC) (first author, M.D.). This strategy increased work since a new faculty member did not immediately have a university e-mail account. Many documents and pdf files were too large for the e-mail system, such as the 144-page document that an agency asked to be distributed to students and faculty. Increasing volume of information and expanding numbers of clinical agencies, faculty, and students created the impetus for the development of an electronic group as a means to manage the volume of ongoing communication.

Beyond a field trip: a cultural excursion.

N ursing faculty should provide students with opportunities to immerse themselves in a cultural experience. Nurse educators often use cultural assessments and cultural immersions to meet course objectives in nursing curricula. Graduate nursing courses can challenge even seasoned nurse educators to develop relevant and novel course assignments that expose students to other cultures. The cultural excursion assignment addresses the void that students often have regarding limited access to the impact of another’s culture. By immersing themselves in an experience outside of the traditional healthcare environment with a cultural group that is not their own, students learn in the cognitive and affective realms. In the cultural excursion assignment, faculty are facilitators in the transition of adult learners from a passive classroom role to an active participation in a self-selected learning experience. In our school, we used a cultural excursion, an innovative experiential teaching strategy.